Friday, December 4, 2009

The Ideal Size

It had been some time since I had last looked at a table for wargaming prior to when I began working on my Realm of Battle gameboard two weeks ago. Once set up, I was surprised at how small it seemed. Now that I'm painting the pieces, my sense of the gameboard's scale has grown considerably. I am left however with the impression that my thinking about the ideal size for a game of 40k needs some adjustment to better suit the space I will have available.

In the past I have used mostly either 6' x 4' tables or 8' x 5' as well as the occasional smaller battle fought over a 4' square of bloody ground. It is pretty obvious with each new codex that the trend for army lists is to drop point costs for many units, allowing for larger armies for the same amount of points relative to their older cousins. I suspect that this might be why my new 6' x 4' gameboard didn't match up to my expectations after spending the last several months making army lists with the new books. That's the best explanation I've thought of so far, I don't know if it's right though. I just couldn't shake the feeling though that the board would feel too crowded with the armies I had in mind.

I've started to come around to the school of thought that favors 1500 point armies, though of course I really need to get some games in with the new edition before I can feel really confident about that. When I was last playing regularly it was usually with 1850 point armies and sometimes going up into the 2000 to 2500 point range. I'm starting to appreciate however the challenge of making the most out of smaller armies as it makes everything that much more valuable to one's overall performance. Although it can be fun to max out your Force Organization Chart, I think that this will be a rarer occurrence in the future as I think time and space will be a greater constraint for me than a limit of 3 Heavy Support choices. Considering how few games I've played in recent years, I hope that smaller armies could end up meaning more chances to actually play with them. Wouldn't that be nice?

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About Me

Hi, my name is Jason. I live on the side of a mountain a few miles north of Asheville, North Carolina. I am a stay-at-home dad and am currently losing my hair. I've been happily painting miniatures and gaming since sometime around 1987. Besides being a sci-fi and fantasy nerd, I'm also an avid fan of The Simpsons and H.P. Lovecraft. Thanks for checking out my blog, hopefully someday it will get better.

WIP-REVIEW: More scenery for Robotech!
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